MUNCIE – Ball State wide receiver Willie Snead opened this season with a slight change to his uniform.

For two years, the name on the back of his jersey simply read "Snead." But in the preseason, he added "IV" to the end, homage to his full name and something larger.

"My family has generations behind us," Snead said. "My dad, and my grandfather and then my great grandfather. I just feel like that's important because passing a name on, that's a lot of honor."

And the man who passed the name on to him, Willie Snead III, played a role in passing on a good deal more to his son.

You'd have to go back to the early 1980s when Willie Snead III wasn't so unlike his son now. The elder Snead starred as a wide receiver at Glade Central High School in Belle Glade, Fla., a small football-obsessed town built around the boom and bust sugar trade and known for producing droves of college ball players.

Willie Snead III had college stops at Virginia and Florida before playing several years in the NFL and other professional leagues. His career ended right around the time Willie Snead IV was born in 1992. Willie Snead III found a post-playing career in athletic training, worked at that for a decade before it led him to a new passion: coaching.

It turned out, he was pretty good at it.

Coaching took Willie Snead III and his family on several cross-country treks. He started out with successful stops at Lake Forest High School in Lake Forest, Ill., Blanche Ely High School in Pompano Beach, Fla., and Mount Carmel High School in San Diego before ending up back in Belle Glade before the 2005 season.

And his son was along for the ride at every step.

"We kind of saw it as him being kind of a military kid, moving around a lot," Willie Snead III said. "It's the same way with coaching. He's always been outgoing, so he's been able to get along with people no matter what school we've been at. In the long run, I think it's benefited him."

Willie Snead IV reached his freshman season two years later, after his father built a strong program and won the 2006 Class 3A Florida state title, and the bond between father and son grew more serious and stronger.

Willie Snead IV always had a close relationship with his mother, Sofia. His father called her the rock of the family, comparing his son's relationship with her to his own relationship with his mom. But once father and son could interact in such an in-depth way over the game of football, they spent even more time together, watching and breaking down film.

"He was always a busy guy, but I was always just next to him trying to learn and see how the business aspect of football went down and how practices were run," Willie Snead IV said. "When it was my turn, I already knew what time it was. I knew what to do."

That knowledge helped him play the role of junior varsity wide receiver at Glade Central, and after the junior varsity season, he moved up to become a varsity backup quarterback, getting his feet wet at a new position.

But he didn't play another season for the Raiders.

Belle Glade is an unusual town, a football obsessed hamlet where the pressure-cooker intensity is on for even the most successful coaches. Add to that the burden of being a former player at the school and having a son ready to step into a prominent role, and Willie Snead III, who faced criticism despite losing only six games in three seasons, didn't like what he saw coming together.

"It's that type of environment that became toxic," Willie Snead III said. "It was just a situation that I didn't want my family in, so I decided to step down.

"I didn't want him to be the source of a situation where they say he's only playing because his dad is the coach. Those type of things can happen there, and it has happened there, and I've seen what it does to kids psychologically."

So the family moved to the Grand Rapids area in Michigan. Willie Snead III took the head coaching job at Holland Christian in Holland, Mich., staying for one 14-0 state championship season in 2008 with Willie Snead IV as a top receiver and defensive back, and then the father and son moved 35 miles away to Muskegon Heights.

It was there Willie Snead IV blossomed into a dual-threat quarterback, running his father's offensive scheme to perfection, but both felt in the long run, he'd be catching passes, not throwing them.

Willie Snead III said the moment when his son's potential clicked was as a sophomore in the 2008 state title game against Detroit Country Day. Among the nine passes Willie Snead IV hauled in was a touchdown he snagged out of the air while just getting his feet down in the corner of the end zone. It's the kind of catch few high schoolers can make, but head out to practices at Scheumann Stadium and Willie Snead IV is still making them routinely.

Colleges recruited him as an athlete, though receiver seemed like his likely landing spot. With the options available, he chose Ball State through the transition from Stan Parrish to Pete Lembo. Willie Snead III remembered sitting at a game in Muncie watching the struggling Cardinals and asking his son if this was where he wanted to be.

Willie Snead IV said he wanted the chance to compete for playing time right away. The Cardinals offered that.

And play quickly he did, starting as a freshman before splitting time late and then exploding as one of the top receivers in the Mid-American Conference as a sophomore last season.

While his son grew into a top-flight college pass catcher, Willie Snead IV was on the move again. After his son's senior season, he also made the leap to college as offensive coordinator at Hampton University. A year later, he returned to the high school ranks at Palm Beach Lakes in West Palm Beach, Fla., with Willie Snead III's younger brother Isaiah at starting quarterback.

That upbringing in a coaching family helped shape the man Willie Snead IV has become, and although many wondered if his father's position got him special treatment, he felt he was held to a higher standard of discipline.

"Just because I was the coach's son doesn't mean I was going to get away with a lot of things," Willie Snead IV said. "He was hard on me the most, and I felt like that just made me the person I am.

"That kind of pressure just helps me."

Now he faces the pressure of being part of a college program, and the coaches see some remnants of his upbringing. Now an All-Mid-American Conference player and recently named a semifinalist for the Biletnikoff Award, given to the nation's top receiver annually, he still has some of the attributes from growing up so close to the game.

"It starts with just his preparation, his mindset when he comes in the building," Ball State receivers coach Keith Gaither said. "His dad has taught him, being a coach and former player himself, taught him how to work, how to take coaching, how to apply it to the field."

But Willie Snead IV also learned from the situations he was put in because of his father's many stops. He called at least seven different places home before he even arrived in Muncie and went to three high schools, so he doesn't dwell on adjusting to different environments. He pointed out he went to a nearly all-black high school in Belle Glade, then to a mostly-white private school and then to a predominantly black school in Muskegon, and each new school offered new lessons and new worlds to understand.

And the ability to adapt has come in handy, like late in his freshman year when he started splitting time and had to reassert his command of a starting role in the offseason.

"He embraces the situation," Ball State coach Pete Lembo said. "He appreciates what he has. I think that background has helped him. It helped him adjust to situations."

With Willie Snead III's busy schedule during the season, he and his wife trade off when they can get out and see their son play in person. But Willie Snead III watches all the games in some manner, makes it to the ones he can.

But despite the distance, the process of coaching his son never really stops.

Willie Snead IV will tell you outright, he is neither the tallest (5-foot-11) nor straight-line fastest receiver out there. He has a subtler sort of athletic talent, and he augments it with outstanding technique.

At practice, watch the way he uses his feet and hands up close, or the way he feels his way through a zone, deploying his signal caller background, a decisiveness with nothing looking sloppy.

It helps he's always calling his dad for tips or help understanding something he's just not seeing right. And his father will provide little things to work on, a learning process perpetually ongoing.

"I wanted to make sure he was prepared for that because I wasn't a super fast receiver," Willie Snead III said. "But he got a lot of his skill development from me, and I taught him as much as I knew to make sure that he was prepared."

Like a name, it's something a father was only too happy to pass on to his next generation.